ABC7 Top Scholar: Anika Kumar

Anika Kumar has turned her love for biology and her father into programs that help provide simple things for those in need.

KGO

Thursday, July 03, 2014

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. (KGO) --

Recent San Rafael High School graduate Anika Kumar has turned her love for biology and her father into programs that help provide simple things for those in need.

Anika prefers dissection tools to textbooks.

"I'm not very disgusted by the goriness of it I just get into it and with gloves on or gloves off I can cut up anything," she said.

It's no surprise the hands-on student's main focus will be biology at Tufts University this fall. Anika will also be keeping a hand in Dissection Access for All, the website she helped create to teach underserved students the art of dissection.

"We film dissection videos in both Spanish and English," Anika explained. "So far we have cow eyeballs and we filmed a cat dissection."

Anika has become an important role model to her fellow students and community. The emotional and financial stress her family faced when her father was diagnosed with cancer led her to found One Simple Wish.

Anika gathers donations from local businesses, including gift cards, knit hats and tooth brushes to help low-income cancer patients cut costs on the simple things.

"I want to go and make smaller clinics in low income areas and have those treatments that the basic treatments like mammograms available to a community that I come from," Anika said. "So that's what my long goal dream is to do."

This is the ninth year for ABC7's Top Scholars program, where ABC7 gives recognition to seven outstanding students, each of whom receives a $1,000 scholarship toward his or her college education. Watch Sunday, July 6 at 10 a.m. to learn more about all of our Top Scholars!